Was Jesus just a good man or a good teacher? Dr. Ray, a psychologist, argues that “good man” is not a choice Jesus left open to us. He walks through why the apostles’ own lives and the content of Jesus’ teaching do not fit the theories that try to get around who he claimed to be.
“Jesus was not a good man”
Jesus was not a good man. You heard me right. Jesus was not a good man, if that’s all he was. If he were only a man, then he knew when he talked and acted like God that it was an act. He knew he wasn’t God. So really, he set people up to be punished and killed to follow him. If he truly thought he was God but he wasn’t, then he was similar to some of the people I used to assess at the state hospitals. He was crazy. He was either God, or he was something far worse.
You can’t get around Jesus by saying he was a good man. That’s fascinating, because many of the intelligentsia, people at universities, folks who fancy themselves great thinkers, just declare, “Well, he was a good teacher, like Buddha, like Gandhi.” No, he wasn’t. He didn’t even know his identity if he wasn’t God. He was claiming to be something he wasn’t.
So there’s no middle ground, as C.S. Lewis said. He didn’t intend to give us a middle ground. He either is who he said he is, or he’s a lot worse. He’s not a normal human being. That’s your choice.
“Why are you going to be martyred for making stuff up?”
Now, I have seen people try to get around this conundrum by saying that the stuff about him thinking and talking and acting like God, his followers put that in there. They wrote it in because they had to make him a little bigger than he was. He’s not just another rabbi guru. He’s getting a bunch of followers, getting thumbs up. We’ve got to make him bigger than he is if we have any chance of overthrowing the Roman Empire. We’ve got to go at this from a different angle. We can’t throw him over militarily, so we’ve got to figure out how to change hearts and minds. I know what we’ll do. We’ll make this guy God.
That’s the thinking. I’ve heard that thinking. It’s a nice little speculative hypothesis by people who want to do away with having to make the decision regarding who Jesus was. But here’s a problem with that. We have pretty good historical evidence that the apostles, almost all of them, were martyred. You’re going to be martyred for making stuff up about a guy? You can give up your life for that?
And here’s another thing. We know they traveled. Thomas, tradition tells us, was in India. Matthew, Africa. Wait a minute. If you’re trying to overthrow the Roman Empire, you don’t have to go to India. Nothing over there. What are you trying to preach? You’re trying to preach a lie that this guy was God? What for?
So he either is who he said he is, or you can’t trust the Gospel as history. You don’t even have to trust it as God’s word. Just trust it as history. These guys wrote down the things he said and did, and you have to say that when they wrote it down, they wildly embellished it. And if you say that, you have to ask, like a good detective, what was their motive? Why? As far as we can tell, these guys were pretty faithful Jews. For them to declare that some guy was God, when they knew he wasn’t, they would be jeopardizing their eternal destiny. Jews didn’t do that. Jews were fearfully monotheistic. This makes no sense. None. Why would they jeopardize not only their souls but their lives? For what? To make up a bunch of stuff about this guy?
Where is the craziness in his teaching?
Here’s the other problem you have. Let’s just say he was crazy. Okay, then let’s look at what he said. Take away all the stuff where he was saying he was God, acting like God, talking like God. Just take his teachings, his parables. I’m a shrink. I’ve read them many times, not because I’m such a wonderful Bible scholar, but because I go to Mass. If you go to Mass for three years, you pretty much hear the whole Gospel.
There’s not a whiff of craziness in what he talked about. Nothing. You would expect that if he’s crazy, this whole idea that “I’m God” would spill over into what he says about how to live your life. But it didn’t. What he said about how to live your life is sublime. It makes total sense. And whether psychology admits it or not, read my book, Jesus, The Master Psychologist. Research supports the kind of stuff Jesus said for more contented, stable, peace-filled living.
So where’s the craziness in his teaching? Is this craziness only circumscribed in his self-identity? If you don’t know who you are, you are really crazy, because that is at the core of reality. Who are you? If Jesus said, “I’m God, that’s who I am,” then he’s crazy if he’s not God. Or he’s very calculating, if he knew he wasn’t God and figured, “I’ve got to get some followers. What’s the best way to do this?”
But even that doesn’t make sense, because he’s not going to get followers by saying he’s God when he’s in a fiercely Jewish community that says, “Our God is one.” Why would you try to convince them otherwise? The only way he could convince them otherwise was to show it. He had to do things that they couldn’t account for. Miracles, signs, wonders, where they said, “How does he do this?” He’s claiming this, but yet he can do this. Even his enemies knew that. Even his enemies said, “Yeah, we’ll admit you do it, but you do it through the power of Satan.” And of course Jesus, as always, has a wonderful response. A couple of sentences, and he just shoots them down.
So don’t let anybody tell your kids, if they go to college, or anybody you talk to, “Well, I’ll admit Jesus was a good man. He was a good teacher. He had a lot of nice ideas about how to live life.” You just look at them and say, “Well, you must not know much about the Gospels at all then.” Because that’s not even a possibility. He can’t have been just a good man.
Dr. Ray makes the case for what Jesus taught in Jesus, the Master Psychologist: Listen to Him.
Transcript of Dr. Ray’s audio blog, lightly edited for reading.